Haunted Destiny by Heather Graham Page A

Jude stared into a haze of dusty darkness. Time seemed to collapse, and he saw himself seven years earlier, moving with his company in the small village where insurgents had taken hold. Felt the way his heart had thundered that day, the way he’d known he couldn’t see everything, couldn’t see into every home, around every corner.
    Some of the soldiers with him had served too long; they shot when something moved—a child, a chicken, a dog, a goat or a pig.
    Some still had illusions of morality; they took greater care.
    And some, in their desperation to believe in the sanctity of life, died—not firing when they should have.
    Corporal Al Bellingham had been one of those men. Hand-to-hand combat, a tiny village, insurgents who lived only to kill...and dozens of mothers, children, the aged.
    Every corner could mean death, and Jude had turned one of those corners to see Al on the ground, writhing. He’d looked around, then hunkered down by his comrade and friend, the man with whom he’d played cards, baseball, music, enduring the hours in the hostile desert. He’d taken Al by the shoulders and dragged him back behind the small and desolate house that had been his own shield, lying low against the ricochet of stray bullets as he did.
    He spoke into his radio, calling the medics, who would do their best. Automatic rifle fire beat a rat-tat-tat just beyond the little enclave where Jude had dragged the wounded man.
    Al opened his eyes and gazed up at Jude. He didn’t address him as “Lieutenant” the way he usually did, even when the men were doing nothing but whiling away the hours, waiting for their call to action.
    He addressed him as “fool.”
    â€œYour head was out there, fool,” Al said. “Head down at all times!”
    â€œThe medics are coming. Don’t try to talk. Save your breath,” Jude said.
    But Al had clutched his arm and looked desperately into his eyes. He rattled off a series of numbers. “Got that? Please, Jude, tell me you got that.”
    â€œAl, medics are coming! You have to fight to live.”
    Al’s grip tightened. “Please, Jude. I have a wife. Mellora. Remember? And a baby daughter. You give Mellora that number. Got it?”
    He wouldn’t be able to keep him alive long enough for the medics to come.
    Jude repeated the numbers.
    Then suddenly, Al shouted, “Behind you, man, behind you!”
    Jude whipped around fast enough to fire first at an insurgent bearing down on him.
    He could still picture that moment as if it had been yesterday. The littered courtyard between desert-dusted homes. Al bleeding on the ground; his enemy dead by the corner of the house.
    And him—alive—because of Al.
    The rat-tat-tat of firepower growing more distant and then fading away, the medics rushing in...
    Not until they were back at base had he learned from their company physician that he couldn’t have spoken with Al Bellingham. Bullets had severed his spinal column and pounded through his skull; the man had died almost instantly.
    Somehow Jude had kept it together long enough to get through his tour of duty.
    He’d imagined it, he’d told himself. He’d imagined the entire encounter.
    And yet he’d felt compelled to speak with Al’s wife. He’d called and told her that he’d been with her husband at the end. He told her how much Al had loved her—and what a brave man he’d been, saving others, refusing to let war make him less of a man.
    And he’d given her the set of numbers.
    A year later, when he was back in the States, Mellora Bellingham had called to thank him. The numbers had been for an insurance policy Al had purchased only days before his death.
    She might never have found it without the numbers he’d given her.
    It wasn’t until he’d applied at the academy that he’d been advised to go into therapy. And he’d gone. He’d thought he understood.